Statue of James Joyce on North Earl Street, Dublin

12:00 PM – Gillian Flynn: Dark Places
Seattle Mystery Bookshop
I can’t quite wrap my head around the plot of this novel, based on the description, but apparently, “JB highly recommends this lush and twisted story.” I’m not sure how much of a recommendation that is, since JB would read assembly instructions from the author.
[LINK]

6:30 PM – Carol Cassella: Oxygen
SPL Ballard Branch
“During the fragile moments of surgery, Seattle anesthesiologist and writer Carol Cassella is not only aware of the scientific intricacies of the human body, but more importantly, understands the emotional complexities patients and doctors face when entering an operating room. This intimate and professional perspective was reflected in her exquisite and critically acclaimed debut, Oxygen.” –Secret Garden Bookshop
[LINK]

7:00 PM – Lisa See: Shanghai Girls
SPL Central Library
“The bestselling author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love tells the story of two sisters who leave Shanghai to find new lives in Los Angeles.”–SPL
(See is one of my favorite authors. Highly recommended!)
[LINK]

7:00 PM – Matthew Simmons: A Jello Horse
The College in Pub
Adorable: “The author of this book is also the author of this newsletter. So we feel a little silly writing about our book in first person plural and as if we are not the author. But we muddle through. We are very proud of our book—it’s a somewhat surreal road novel about a trip to a funeral—and think maybe you’d like it. There will be pinball.” –Matthew Simmons, UW Bookstore
Go, show Matt some love.
[LINK]

7:30 PM – Andy Paige: Style on a Shoestring
Barnes & Noble University Village
I am not stylish. I have no particular desire to be stylish. I have not, and will not, read this book- nothing personal, just a subject that does not interest me at all. If you be stylin’, well, more power to you. Go see the author, I’ll be having a nice nap.
[LINK]

7:30 PM – Bill Wasik: And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture
Town Hall Seattle, Downstairs
Wasik explains how the interwebs are the ultimate pet rock.
[LINK]

7:30 PM – Joshua Beckman: Take It
Open Books

Packs of boar were trampling in the
moonlight some needle or piece of shit
that the earth needed pushed into it.
God has made this hotel in his image.
The fluctuation of life. Yes. Yes,
I understand folly, we’re the creatures
he explained that to.”

[LINK]

A uterus. Not wandering.

7:30 PM – Marty McConnell, Andi Strickland and Karen Finneyfrock: The Morrigan Tour
Richard Hugo House Cabaret
“One of the first all-female spoken word troupes hits the road for the “Wandering Uterus Reunion Tour” featuring original members McConnell and Strickland plus Seattle slam legend Karen Finneyfrock.” –RHH
[LINK]

7:30 PM – Robert Olmstead: Far Bright Star
Elliott Bay Book Co.
“Olmstead’s seventh novel (after the award-winning Coal Black Horse) employs a sparse, poetic style that is appropriate for the book’s bleak setting and subject matter. Set in the Mexican desert in 1916, the novel follows Napoleon Childs, a veteran soldier in the American Expeditionary Force sent to capture Pancho Villa. The futility of this mission is compounded by unendurable conditions and the pointless violence of the war. The novel revolves around an expedition to collect livestock, the grisly battle that ensues, and Childs’s improbable struggle for survival. His attempts to make sense of this experience and of his life spent in the army are portrayed powerfully and subtly, and his conclusion that he has died and been reborn presages the death of the 19th-century world with the arrival of World War I.” –Douglas Southard, Library Journal Review
[LINK]